Wednesday, November 24, 2010
What went right this November!
Not sure if many of you heard, but I ran for office this November, as a candidate for Folsom City Council, one of seven. The results? I came in 7/7, the last or least popular vote-getter, with 6.15% of the vote (3216 votes). This post is about the process, the experience and the outcome.
Let me be the first to say that I knew I didn't have much of a chance going in (yes, that's what all of us losers say) - the incumbents are strongly established in Folsom - they've been running the city for a long time now, and Folsom residents are happy with their work. (I'm not going to slam anyone, so if that's what your waiting for, too bad!) Also, my platform, was to bring diversity to Folsom's all white City Council. With a stated minority percentage of the entire population at approx. 15-17%, and if you average a minority voting population of about 50% or half, so about 7-9% and voter turnout about 60% of the vote, the actual (approx.) minority population voting was about 4-6%. So, under the circumstances, I did fairly well with my campaign platform and my core audience.
However, I did not reach out to the majority as well as I did the minority population. So what did I do wrong there? I did not do any door to door campaigning, or "precinct walking" using the correct buzz words. I didn't do any mailings or phone calls either. So what did I do, you may ask? I attended every candidate forum I was invited to, I spent more than half my campaign budget on signs (more than half of which sat in my garage due to an unschooled, first-timer error), and I chickened out at the enormity of the task that I signed up for myself.
Regardless, I thought that this was a phenomenal process, and to be quite unoriginal and cliched, it was a real "eye-opener." I urge every activistic, concerned resident to consider running for local office, to get some of these experiences first-hand.
First, even though this office (City Council) is supposedly non-partisan, which means that no where in the election filing paperwork are you required to list your party affiliation, it is super important to everyone else to find out what your party affiliation is. That was really ironic! It started out with the endorsement process. Somehow, I got all the emails related to endorsements from the Democratic party and that started the ball rolling. The endorsement process was fascinating! It forced me to prepare for future candidate forums and gave me an idea of the Big Divide in our partisan country, where to draw the lines between the reds and the blues, between capitalism and labor unions, between employers and employees, between pro-choice and anti-choice, between heterosexuality and homosexuality (as it related to marriage-equality laws), among others. (Btw, if you are ever confused as to what party affiliation you belong to, whether you are a closet Republican or Democrat, I urge you to find an endorsement questionnaire from both parties and to review your answers for both - you will quickly find out which color codes you must now specify in your campaign materials!).
Second, third, fourth - research, research, research. Immediately after I filed the first part of my nomination papers, which is basically something that says you're interested and that you will follow through with the rest of the required submissions within the next deadline, I got a call from a political consultant, supposedly hired by more than one of "newcomers," although in reality it was just one candidate, and he made a compelling case for me as to why I should not run. It compelled me to run, because I was ticked off that someone would tell me why I shouldn't do something, when it was so obvious that he was employed by someone who had to gain from me dropping out. Regardless, it was a polite conversation and it was interesting as there was a lot of research that he quoted about newcomers diluting the vote and about how we must get the incumbents out.
I was unprepared for the next phase - the candidate forums that various groups host, in order to give the voting public an insight on the candidates that will appear on ballots. Some of these were televised live, some paraphrased in local newspapers and others were resident forums. It was fascinating to see how different groups rallied together to get information from potential elected representatives, how they each brought up their relevant priorities and how they were all interested in the common good of the city. However, after this whole process, I really wonder how much of the electorate was influenced by these various events. It seemed to me that these reached a few key segments of society, which was great for overall word of mouth, but perhaps did not translate into a direct share of the vote. For that, I think I needed to have done a lot more research, gotten lists of voting democrats, done precinct walks, and prepared much harder on issues of particular interest to Folsom voters. So, this should have been acted on much before the deadlines for nomination and all that fun stuff that actually happens between the official names of candidates on the ballot and the election.
Fifth, the little amount of money (relative to the other candidates) that I set aside for funds could have been used better, elaborating on the statement I made a couple of paras above. I spent way too much money on street signs, (about 50%) only to find out that due to City ordinances that were enforced strictly and due to sweetheart deals between developers and those they were very familiar with, pretty much the only options I had for signs were people's front lawns, often inside neighborhoods or enclaves that weren't very visible. Furthermore, I ended up having more than a third of my signs in my garage, even on election day as I had no place to put them, and I had only ordered 150 in all. So that was a huge fiasco. I think that money would have been better spent in mailers or post cards. Oh well!
All in all, I think majority of the voters voted on their familiarity with the names on the ballot. There is definitely a concerned percentage of voters and I think I'm right in saying that this percentage is growing, that makes informed decisions about candidates. Prior to this election, I would not have counted myself as such a voter, but I know going forward, with all the opportunities that we have to learn more about those on our ballots, never again will I be an uninformed voter. There is just too much at stake to let that happen. We need to hold our leaders accountable and this is the only way to do so.
Let me be the first to say that I knew I didn't have much of a chance going in (yes, that's what all of us losers say) - the incumbents are strongly established in Folsom - they've been running the city for a long time now, and Folsom residents are happy with their work. (I'm not going to slam anyone, so if that's what your waiting for, too bad!) Also, my platform, was to bring diversity to Folsom's all white City Council. With a stated minority percentage of the entire population at approx. 15-17%, and if you average a minority voting population of about 50% or half, so about 7-9% and voter turnout about 60% of the vote, the actual (approx.) minority population voting was about 4-6%. So, under the circumstances, I did fairly well with my campaign platform and my core audience.
However, I did not reach out to the majority as well as I did the minority population. So what did I do wrong there? I did not do any door to door campaigning, or "precinct walking" using the correct buzz words. I didn't do any mailings or phone calls either. So what did I do, you may ask? I attended every candidate forum I was invited to, I spent more than half my campaign budget on signs (more than half of which sat in my garage due to an unschooled, first-timer error), and I chickened out at the enormity of the task that I signed up for myself.
Regardless, I thought that this was a phenomenal process, and to be quite unoriginal and cliched, it was a real "eye-opener." I urge every activistic, concerned resident to consider running for local office, to get some of these experiences first-hand.
First, even though this office (City Council) is supposedly non-partisan, which means that no where in the election filing paperwork are you required to list your party affiliation, it is super important to everyone else to find out what your party affiliation is. That was really ironic! It started out with the endorsement process. Somehow, I got all the emails related to endorsements from the Democratic party and that started the ball rolling. The endorsement process was fascinating! It forced me to prepare for future candidate forums and gave me an idea of the Big Divide in our partisan country, where to draw the lines between the reds and the blues, between capitalism and labor unions, between employers and employees, between pro-choice and anti-choice, between heterosexuality and homosexuality (as it related to marriage-equality laws), among others. (Btw, if you are ever confused as to what party affiliation you belong to, whether you are a closet Republican or Democrat, I urge you to find an endorsement questionnaire from both parties and to review your answers for both - you will quickly find out which color codes you must now specify in your campaign materials!).
Second, third, fourth - research, research, research. Immediately after I filed the first part of my nomination papers, which is basically something that says you're interested and that you will follow through with the rest of the required submissions within the next deadline, I got a call from a political consultant, supposedly hired by more than one of "newcomers," although in reality it was just one candidate, and he made a compelling case for me as to why I should not run. It compelled me to run, because I was ticked off that someone would tell me why I shouldn't do something, when it was so obvious that he was employed by someone who had to gain from me dropping out. Regardless, it was a polite conversation and it was interesting as there was a lot of research that he quoted about newcomers diluting the vote and about how we must get the incumbents out.
I was unprepared for the next phase - the candidate forums that various groups host, in order to give the voting public an insight on the candidates that will appear on ballots. Some of these were televised live, some paraphrased in local newspapers and others were resident forums. It was fascinating to see how different groups rallied together to get information from potential elected representatives, how they each brought up their relevant priorities and how they were all interested in the common good of the city. However, after this whole process, I really wonder how much of the electorate was influenced by these various events. It seemed to me that these reached a few key segments of society, which was great for overall word of mouth, but perhaps did not translate into a direct share of the vote. For that, I think I needed to have done a lot more research, gotten lists of voting democrats, done precinct walks, and prepared much harder on issues of particular interest to Folsom voters. So, this should have been acted on much before the deadlines for nomination and all that fun stuff that actually happens between the official names of candidates on the ballot and the election.
Fifth, the little amount of money (relative to the other candidates) that I set aside for funds could have been used better, elaborating on the statement I made a couple of paras above. I spent way too much money on street signs, (about 50%) only to find out that due to City ordinances that were enforced strictly and due to sweetheart deals between developers and those they were very familiar with, pretty much the only options I had for signs were people's front lawns, often inside neighborhoods or enclaves that weren't very visible. Furthermore, I ended up having more than a third of my signs in my garage, even on election day as I had no place to put them, and I had only ordered 150 in all. So that was a huge fiasco. I think that money would have been better spent in mailers or post cards. Oh well!
All in all, I think majority of the voters voted on their familiarity with the names on the ballot. There is definitely a concerned percentage of voters and I think I'm right in saying that this percentage is growing, that makes informed decisions about candidates. Prior to this election, I would not have counted myself as such a voter, but I know going forward, with all the opportunities that we have to learn more about those on our ballots, never again will I be an uninformed voter. There is just too much at stake to let that happen. We need to hold our leaders accountable and this is the only way to do so.
